Notes on art by Nathaniel Katz
i will be doing an artist talk this evening at lugar a dudas where i am in a residency. i’ll be doing it in spanish! so if you are in cali, colombia and want to hear or help me stumble through a discussion of my work in spanish, then you should come.
Throughout the thesis year i strongly held to the claim that my work lies in the actions that I performed with my participants. It was important for me to maintain the performed action as the integral site of meaning production because I thought it carried enough suggestive power to allow for an active engagement with an audience. Yet, I refused to resort to traditional photographic or video documentation as a means for representing the work. I often chose elusive means of documentation. Each time I showed or talked about the work the critique was voiced that I am not allowing an audience into the experience. It somehow seemed vital to me for the integrity of the work that the specifics remain in the intimate and immediate experience; I also wanted very much for the work to function with an audience outside of the person with whom the work was created. Continue reading ‘Lessons in Art and Failure’
Frauke Behrendt was guest lecturer in Teri Rueb’s Network Landscapes class monday. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media and Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.
After the Douglas Kahn lecture, Christiane Paul assigned us a media cut up of our very own, here’s mine, it’s a mash up of the november 11th lonelygirl15 entry and gw bush’s radio address from the same day
I spent a couple of hours last night on Second Life doing some “research” for my paper for Christiane’s class. I had some interesting moments, but overall i definitely recognize why i’m not a gamer. i have no patience at all for virtual environments, role play, etc. i kept thinking the entire time how much i’d rather be reading something dense that i don’t get. But, my visit was useful for my paper. i’m outlining a study of how structures of capitalism replicate themselves in second life (and other virtual environments). Lucky for me i ended up in some ridiculous corporate city with shopping malls and stuff. when i went exploring the slums (…) i discovered a counter culture that models it’s virtual counter culture behaviours and aesthetics almost identically to the way they manifest in our real world. i found the same signifiers anti-authoritarianism in dive bars, cyberpunks, anarchist signs, revolutionary posters and without distinction or awareness, hanging next to the poster of lenin was an “obey” poster. the appropriated symbols of revolution and capitalist function.
Eventually i got bored and went to sleep…